Today’s strip is a sobering reminder of just how tantalizingly close we came to completely avoiding the foul, intrusive neighbor that is the Starbuck Jones movie. If only Mason had never come to Ohio, none of this would have happened.

– Mason only came to Ohio, of course, because he met Les on the set of Lust For Lisa.
– Tempting as it is to pin this all on Les, he was only able to lure Mason to Ohio with Holly’s collection of “Starbuck Jones” comics.
– Holly’s “Starbuck Jones” collection only existed because Cory started it.
– Cory only started the collection because… well, Tom only knows that. Maybe something to do with his stepfather reading it when he was a kid…
– And Ohio is only a state because the British ceded it to the United States in the Treaty of Paris, which was only possible because the French ceded the Ohio Valley to the British after losing the French and Indian War.

“Fan” theory time:
Funky is still in a coma from that 2010 car wreck and everything that has happened since then has been a dream. It was immediately before the wreck when Starbuck Jones was first mentioned (Funky had to sell SJ issue #1 to cover Komix Korner’s overdue rent), everything else involving Starbuck Jones has occurred after the wreck. Also, think of all of the other outlandish things in this strip that have happened since that wreck, things that would have been unlikely before: the successful publication of Lisa’s Story and its national book tour and “Hollywood” chapters, Cayla’s appearance changes, Les’ love life, Cory becoming a soldier and a well-adjusted individual, Cindy comes crawling back to Ohio, Wally snags Rache and Buddy, Dick Tracy…

This theory is, of course, disgustingly unoriginal and incredibly stupid. But is it really worse than the alternative?

Hands down the funniest FW strip of the decade, as BatNom pretends there’s some sort of continuity involved here. I mean come on, as if a FW character could recite a timeline of actual events in more or less the order they occurred. Totally wacky and zany.

It’s pretty funny how Batiuk acts like this is some intricate web of connections and causality. When 99% of your strip is fixated on comics and every plot you have takes place in the same pizza place, of course everything’s related.

I can almost accept Pete being there, but why is the project storyboard guy hanging out with the director and the stars of the film? Doesn’t he have a wife and young son at home? Flash museums, Comic-Con, jetting off to Ohio…the guy is at least forty years old and he’s living this ridiculous fantasy life while his adoring wife just sits around the house with that kid of theirs? The woman just filmed an Emmy-nominated documentary for God’s sake.

I’m trying to find Ground Zero for this theory of mine…probably the idiotic “Time Pool” story, but maybe not.

The theory is this: when I first started reading this, um, comic strip, around the time of the “Les Climbs a Mountain” story, Funky Winkerbean was basically constructed of three things–

1. Boring
2. Badly constructed
3. Pretentious.

The last one was definitely the characteristic that the creator was going for, one and two were just the natural result of award-chasing.

Lately, though, it seems to me that the elements of Funky Winkerbean have shifted. Now they are–

1. Boring.
2. Badly constructed.3. Childish.

These latest arcs are really swimming in “childishness.” Every adult ever spazzing out because two of them were going to visit the Flash Museum? That is childishness in the extreme. But no one would ever say it was “pretentious.” Which might be progress.

At least when people remember the strip, they won’t be thinking about how it was pretentious. They’ll be thinking about how childish it all became, and maybe Tom Batiuk will get a sympathetic shake of the head.

Actually, the idea that Funky’s wasting away comatose somewhere is somewhat more reassuring than this, If Batiuk had had room, we’d have been told that the creators come from the Cleveland area and that the printer Batom used is based in Parma.

Actually, I am a big fan of the “Funky’s in a coma” theory. It would account for Cindy remaining forever young in his mind and Holly aging like crazy. It also accounts for EVERYTHING in the world happening around his small pizza shop after his failed business expansion. It would also allow TB to kill off Funky (like he did John Darling) when ends the strip preventing the syndicate from carrying on the strip without him. Is the theory realistic? No, but when has anything in FW been realistic?

ah…if memory serves we first met Mr. Jarr in Hollywood where he was going to be the lead in the Lust for Lisa TV movie, and that he had been up for the lead in the upcoming Starbuck Jones movie. This all happened in California, there was narry a mention of Ohio until the author started to shoe horn it in which of course renders this litany of Ohio links even more annoying.
And is the maybe the first time I’ve seen Pete happy. And why? Why does going to Ohio make him so cheerful, he was miserable there too. Maybe he just blends in better there than in Hollywood in the company of professionals who engaged in creative work and find it fulfilling despite of course having to deal with how Studios work and the frustrations of working in a popular genre which means well, it has to be popular. A concept the Author has problems with it would seem.

And to just think, if Les didn’t have his childish tantrum and took his typewriter and went home with his mythical “kill fee” while kicking everybody in the balls and yanking the rug out in the process, the “Adventures of Lusty Ghost Lisa” softcore Cinemax movie would have happened, and the Starsuck movie would have been done with a different actor and crew at one tenth of the budget and in one-quarter of the time…

By the way — That sweet-assed blonde who was going to play Lisa? The one with the 40-FFF cup size? **THAT** IS WHO YOU GET TO PLAY STARBUCK’S LOVE INTEREST; **THAT** IS HOW YOU SELL TICKETS!

The real reason is because this film production has singlehandedly eliminated unemployment in Ahia thanks to the Westview Nepotism Mafia, and there’s still more people who can get on the payroll for no-show jobs….

The director is just citing a bunch of things that happened. None of them are in any way a reason to have the premiere at a little theatre in Ohio.
The “Funky in a Coma” theory is intriguing. The strip was never much good, but there was a real uptick in the generally cruddy, incomprehensible nature of things around about the time Funky was run off the road.